Gay author Edmund White has written over twenty books including
the classic gay coming of age novel - A Boy’s Own Story
and was co-editor of The Joy of Gay Sex
In 1991 Edmund White wrote about being gay:
As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excuse me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm an identity I was unhappily piecing together. In the early 1950s, the only book I could find in the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library was Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice”.
His latest book is entitled CHAOS, which includes four stories – each having the theme of aging as a gay man – of recollection and of longing. Age has always been an issue in the gay culture. Once past the magical age of 35 years old, you are suddenly thrust, or is it shoved, over the hill.
Edmund White, born January 13, 1940, writes now as an elder gay man – with CHAOS being a mix of fiction and autobiography – teasingly letting you guess what parts are true and what is fantasy.
With Edmund White’s characters, gay sex is the vibrant pulsing blood of life – regardless of age. Only Edmund White can, with his unique prose, take his stories plunging into deep despair – and climb to bright and happy heights.
I can just dip in at any moment and find odd associations, memories, imaginary dialogues, sexy scenes, translation problems, moments that make me wince and even a few that make me smile with a sense of triumph. CHAOS - page 147
All the New York hustlers now work online and by cell phone – actual spontaneous encounters in the flesh has been eliminated, as if no one could bear the uncertainly anymore of possible rejection - nor did anyone want to stand on an icy corner, in a T-shirt and Levi’s jacket, while the paired passing headlights picked at his body like chopsticks… the photographic portrait has become the only physical reality… the pose or the camera angle made the penis look huge… and the shaved balls became big as glass buoys in a fisherman’s net. CHAOS Page 123
He liked the glow of naked young flesh under the spotlights, the smell of freshly poured beer, the pools of attention as men gathered around a dancer like a big, showy camellia through the crowd. He liked to sit at the bar and look up at these kids with their powerful legs, sweat-drenched torsos, broad shoulders, and un-focused smiles. Sometimes one of them would drip on him – they were nude and extravagant as hothouse flowers blooming above all these old men. Once in Italy he had once seen rose bushes threaded through gnarled olive trees – that was the effect… these dancers were shaved, tattooed, bronzed, tinted: even their public hair, when they revealed a glimpse, was just a shaped, trimmed patch to make their genitals look still bigger. EVERYTHING – sneakers or combat boots, thong or towel, nipple ring or diamond ear-bob – had been thought out, but even so they had a reckless, raucous assertiveness that came though their primping like a trumpet through a thicket of quivering strings. CHAOS page 123
When you are in the mood for an unusual and interesting read –
run the bath and enjoy CHAOS.
Posted in Gay Novel Review
